1. Field
One or more embodiments relate to an image processing apparatus and method for anti-aliasing that may be used for ray tracing of three-dimensional (3D) rendering.
2. Description of the Related Art
A three-dimensional (3D) rendering scheme corresponds to an image processing scheme that may generate and provide an image at a particular viewpoint based on modeled virtual 3D object information. The 3D rendering scheme may include polygon-based rasterization, ray tracing of tracing a ray progress path inversely from a viewpoint desired to be rendered, and the like.
Ray tracing may use physical properties of light, such as reflection, refraction, and penetration, and thus may generate an enhanced image close to an actual image. On the other hand, ray tracing may use large amounts of calculations and thus have difficulty in realizing real-time rendering.
Aliasing denotes a staircase phenomenon occurring due to a precision or resolution difference between a scene to be rendered and an apparatus to display the scene. Anti-aliasing denotes a process of reducing aliasing using an image processing method.
Anti-aliasing may be performed by sampling an area corresponding to a single pixel a plurality of times, that is, by calculating a color value of the pixel through plural samples. It is also referred to as super sampling.
The super-sampling operation may use high specification hardware for calculations.